2025 Kings World Cup Nations

The 2025 Kings World Cup Nations was an international seven-a-side football tournament based on the Kings League format created by Gerard Piqué and Ibai Llanos. Unlike the Kings World Cup launched in 2024, which is a club competition, this tournament saw players from the different versions of the Kings League forming teams to represent their respective nations, similar to the FIFA World Cup.

Background

Before the start of the 2024-2025 season, in an introductory video for the campaign uploaded on 7 September 2024. A second international tournament, the Kings World Cup Nations was announced, this time with players forming national teams to represent their countries. During the launch event for the Kings League Italy on 18 November 2024, it was confirmed that Italy would be hosting the tournament, held from 1 to 12 January 2025, with the finals taking place in Turin's Juventus Stadium.

Format

The 2025 Kings World Cup Nations retains the format of the 2024 Kings World Cup tournament, which included features of a Swiss-system tournament but with only 16 teams.

First stage

• In the first round, the 16 teams each play one match, with the pairings decided by a random draw with no restrictions.
• All teams advance to the second round, with the teams that won their first-round match going to a 'winner bracket' and the teams that lost going to a 'loser bracket'.
• The winners of the 'winner bracket' in the second round advance to the knockout stage, while the losing teams will face the winning teams from the 'loser bracket' in a last-chance round. The winners of the last-chance round will secure the remaining places to the knockout stage.

Knockout stage

• The knockout phase then consist of a quarterfinals, semifinals and a final.

Competing teams

As usual in the Kings League, each national team was chaired by a streamer or a football related personality.

Spain and Mexico, the countries that host the Kings League and the Américas Kings League, were the first two national teams confirmed.

Squads

Note: Since this is the first tournament held with national teams under the Kings format, every player is considered as starting over with zero caps regardless of any prior association football or futsal career.

Manager: Martín Posse

Manager: Victor Taube

Manager: Sergio Verdirame

Manager: Damir Agovic

Manager: Mauro Micheli

Manager: Kensuke Nakai

Manager: Hong Moon

Manager: Severo Meza

Manager: Majid El Khal

Manager: Víctor Chaires

Manager: Abdullah Al-Shehri

Manager: Daniel Romo

Manager: Burak Kaymak

Manager: Valeriy Fedorchuk

Manager: Dillion Vedral

Manager: Sardor Nishanbaev

Broadcast

The entire tournament was livestreamed on Twitch, YouTube and Kick, both from the official Kings League channels and individual feeds from the teams' chairpersons.

First Stage

First round

Pairings for the first round were drawn on 5 December 2024.

Second round

In the winners bracket, winners advance directly to the quarterfinals, losers go to the last-chance round. And in the losers bracket, winners go to the last-chance round, losers are eliminated.

Winners' bracket

Losers' bracket

Last-chance round

Winners advance to the quarterfinals, losers are eliminated.

Knockout stage

Qualified teams

Quarter-final pairings were drawn on 6 January, before the start of the last-chance round.

Quarter-finals

Semi-finals

Final

Goalscorers

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References